


How long is forever?

by Finnie



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Can be read as romantic if that's your cup of tea though, Other, Platonic Relationships, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 16:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12892182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Finnie/pseuds/Finnie
Summary: - sometimes just one second.





	How long is forever?

_how long is forever?_

_sometimes just one second._

the doctor and clara oswald hand in hand, and all of time and space. their hands meet, and ten thousand stars spill across the sky in an explosion of light.

.

**_tick_ **

face the raven.

.

_tick_

the first time he meets an echo of clara oswald, he can't save her. she is metal and rust and memory. she saves him though, and he remembers the scatter of images, the handprints of a girl who had asked him to remember before she commanded him to run.

_tock_

.

_tick_

the second echo of her slips through his fingers like sand. he outstretches his hands, but she falls. her face is still, like it's all she ever does. fall now, clara oswald. fall. fall. _fall._

the doctor swears to never lose her again.

_tock_

.

_tick_

the real clara oswald is a thing of wonder, an odd one out stuck in this monotone time and place, a woman who doesn't take anything from anyone, even from him. there are some people in the world who make every second feel like forever. they've never met before that day, but in a way, they've known each other all along.

time comes when they stand in the doctor's tomb on trenzalore, and clara oswald steps into the time winds to save him; that's when the doctor knows that she's looking after him, that she has been looking after him for longer than mankind has been looking at the stars, even.

 _run,_ she says, _and remember me._ she quietly slips from time.

_tock._

.

_tick_

the three doctors and a clara stand around the moment, hands intervowen. _never,_ he tells her. _never cruel or cowardly._ they do not press the button.

clara oswald stands at his side as gallifrey falls. she will never leave him, she swears.

_tock_

.

_tick_

and then they stand together in front of the tardis in glasgow on the worst day of her life. the doctor observes carefully as she talks over the phone to the younger version of him, mourns him like he's dead. the doctor is never truly alive to her again, he is sure.

she wonders if she misses him when she sees him, every single day for him, and for her, that every other saturday and sunday.

_tock_

.

_tick_

they fight, one screaming, the other quiet, and clara says all the terrible things that she had been thinking, spits every last drop of poison that's been collecting in her mouth ever since the doctor changed. the doctor looks at her wistfully, searches for signs of recognition. she shakes her head at him, turns her head and walks away.

later, when she's calmed down, she stays with him, tells him that she doesn't hate him, holds him when he's shaking. she thinks about leaving, but she stays there, always but his side but, the doctor has a nagging feeling, just a snitch out of reach. he will never catch her again. she had been the only real thing in the world, his clara.

_tock_

.

_tick_

it's an exquisite sort of pain, when you're not, to someone, the same person that he used to be. the doctor should be used to it by now, but he isn't, to the people he loves looking at him like he's a stranger. he never really was.

 _are you going to leave me,_ he asks her on the night after she had lost danny and he had lost the master. _no,_ she clutches his hand. _i'm going to look after you._

they sit close together in the tardis, and in the dark, he wonders if she's imagining the doctor as he had once looked like.

_tock_

.

_tick_

during one of the long nights, she reads to him out of a dusty book off a shelf in her childhood bedroom.

„how long is forever? sometimes just one second.“

_tock_

_._

_face the raven._

clara oswald says the three words that would end her life, holds on to her hands like she couldn't disappear if he was holding her tight enough. _don't go,_ he whispers, _stay with me._ she laughs, a high and mournful sound that only he could ever draw from her. _no, you, stay here._

the doctor doesn't do as he's told. he follows, but clara doesn't turn back to look at him. as the raven smashes into her, she looks into the distance as if she sees something better there, a future or an echo of a distant past.

_tock._

.

and clara oswald falls like a marionette whose strings had been cut.


End file.
